News Roundup: Hamster Powered Mobile; US Kids SMS

Elvis Charges Mobile PhonesElvis Charges Mobile Phones
A 16-year-old lad in the West Country is breaking open the alcopops as he celebrates passing his GSCE electronics course – all thanks to his cunning hamster powered phone charger invention.

Peter Ash, from Lawford in Somerset, rustled up the wheeze after listening to his sister Sarah moaning that his pet hamster Elvis was keeping her awake at night by whizzing around on his exercise wheel for hours on end.

A light bulb illuminated above young Peter’s head as he realised that his hamster’s nocturnal marathons could be used to generate electricity.

For the next 13 months, the teenager worked on perfecting the hamster-powered device for his GSCE electronics coursework project.

After strenuous trials, Peter managed to get the insomniac hamster to generate enough power to charge his mobile phone overnight.

Rumours that he is now working on a dog powered version for powering small sound systems have proved to be unfounded.

Nearly 40% of Mobiles Bought By US Teens For TextingNearly 40% of Mobiles Bought By US Teens For Texting
A recent survey in the States by IDC and SMS.ac revealed that talking is, like, so uncool amongst teenagers, with Da KidZ preferring to text than talk.

The study revealed that 35.9% of teens acquired their cellphones for the sole or main purpose of texting, with just 13.3% of them getting all traditional and actually talking into the things.

Naturally, we advise that a large mountain side of salt be consumed with these ‘facts’ seeing as the survey was commissioned by online text service SMS.ac who have something of a vested interest.

Curiously, the survey doesn’t explain what the remaining 50.8% of kids are doing with their phones.

SMS.ac

A Feast Of Firefox FactsA Feast Of Firefox Facts
Anyone using the excellent Mozilla Firefox browser may find this site invaluable: http://www.extensionsmirror.nl

The site serves up a ton of useful links to turn browser dabblers into Firefox pros, with information about rendering issues, downloading, interface enhancements, installable mini-applications, configuration and preference customisation, browser tabs, extensions and more.